(Novel Process For Composite Material Application)
1. Field of the Invention
The invention describes a new dry plating process with high efficiency used to form with high yield, in a short time, an important film of polycrystalline structure zinc-iron alloy on the surface of metallic substrates; mainly iron, iron alloys, stainless steel and titanium.
The coating of the metallic surface is obtained by mechanical projection of selected composite material in defined conditions, in order to reduce the treatment time, to decrease the dust formation, and globally increase the yield of the treatment.
2. Prior Art
The conventional mechanical plating method to form a zinc film on the surface of metallic substrates is described in prior patents, U.S. Pat. No. 4,655,832 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,714,622; these methods use either a mixture of zinc alloy and steel shots or an ejection material which is projected or blasted onto the substrate.
In all the earlier described methods of dry plating, the treatment time is long, the ejections of material are multiple, the yield of the transfer of the zinc or zinc alloy on to the surface of the substrate is low, and the earlier described processes generate overly high amounts of wastes.
It has been discovered that some of the main factors influencing directly the efficiency of the process are: (1) the nature of the material used for zinc dry plating; and (2) the projection process of the ejection material on the substrate.